SHOW OF THE WEEK: Colin in Black and White (Oct. 29, Netflix)

Colin Kaepernick shares a story of determination and hope in “Colin in Black and White.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Netflix

Choices and perspectives, everyone has them.

If you watch this limited series created by former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick and filmmaker Ava DuVernay, you might reflect on the former and experience a shift in the latter.

Kaepernick became famous even to those of us who don’t follow football after he started protesting police brutality and anti-Black racism by refusing to stand during the U.S. national anthem in the 2016 NFL season.

That Kaepernick was essentially blackballed by the league after his protest seems a clear demonstration of the racism he was highlighting. He has not played professional football since the end of that season.

But “Colin in Black & White,” a hybrid of drama and documentary, only briefly mentions what happened in 2016. It’s mainly about Colin as a high school student in Turlock, Calif. (played by Jaden Michael of “Wonderstruck” and “The Get Down”), about his love of football, about being the biracial child of white adoptive parents (played by Nick Offerman and Mary-Louise Parker), about laying the foundations for the man he would become.

And it’s easy to perceive the subtle and not so subtle racism that young Colin experiences as the groundwork for the adult activist, which is no doubt the point.

Indeed, the narration by the real Kaepernick explicitly ties professional sports and American social systems to white supremacy, including a segment that compares football tryouts of Black players to the sizing up of slaves.

The tone isn’t bitter or combative, mind you; Kaepernick is telling it like it is, touching on everything from the denigration of Black beauty to white appreciation for the so-called “acceptable Negro” of popular TV shows.

Meanwhile, we watch young Colin’s single-minded pursuit of an elusive college football scholarship, despite the fact colleges across the country were falling over themselves to sign him up for baseball, a sport he also excelled at along with basketball.

There’s a poignancy to the fact that though Kaepernick went on to quarterback for the only school that offered him a football scholarship, the University of Nevada, and distinguished himself there and as a member of the San Francisco 49ers, his football career appears to be over.

But my perception at the end of the six episodes was not of failure but of triumph, of not losing hope or dignity despite the harms perpetuated by an oppressive system.

“Trust your power,” Kaepernick tells his younger self. “Love your Blackness. You will know who you are.”

Netflix also has the comedy special “Sex: Unzipped” (Oct. 25), featuring rapper Saweetie and a cast of puppets, comedians and sex experts talking about healthy sex.

Short Takes

The Long Call (Oct. 28, BritBox)

Fans of detective dramas “Vera” and “Shetland” will want to give this series a look. It’s the latest TV adaptation of an Ann Cleeves novel, starring Ben Aldridge (“Pennyworth”) as Detective Inspector Matthew Venn. Venn is good at his job and happy in his relationship with husband Jonathan (Declan Bennett), but he bears the scars of being shunned by his very religious parents after he left their evangelical sect. The series opens with Venn mourning his father’s death while not being welcome at the funeral. When a man’s body is found on the beach, the victim turns out to have ties not only to the town’s community centre and a couple of the young women who went there, but to the church that Matthew fled. The cast boasts familiar British faces, including Pearl Mackie (“Doctor Who”) as DC Jen Rafferty; Juliet Stevenson (“Bend It Like Beckham”) as Matthew’s mother; Neil Morrissey (“Line of Duty”) as a businessman with connections to the community centre and Martin Shaw (“George Gently”) as a church leader.

Overlord and the Underwoods (Oct. 29, CBC Gem)

This live-action comedy is intergalactic, but its message about the value of family is definitely down to earth. Arrogant alien Overlord (Troy Feldman) — “destroyer of nebulas, maker of smoothies” — has moved in with the family of his seventh cousin once removed, Flower Underwood (Patrice Goodman), making a nuisance of himself while hiding out from interplanetary bounty hunters. Overlord claims to hate Earth — “except for that television show where the housewives are mean to each other” — and the Underwoods, although it seems obvious that his adopted family will grow on him and vice versa. Mom Flower and dad Jim (Darryl Hinds) seem like trusting souls, ripe for exploitation by Overlord, but son Weaver (Ari Resnick) is on to his tricks. The cast includes Kamaia Fairburn of “Endlings” as sister Willow and Jann Arden as the voice of Overlord’s robot sidekick RO-FL. The series comes from Canadian writer Anthony Q. Farrell (“The Office”) and Ryan Wiesbrock (“Holly Hobbie”). If you’re into gentle, wholesome laughs, this might fit the bill.

CBC Gem also has the two-part documentary “Dreamland: The Burning of Black Wall Street” (Oct. 29), which examines not just the 1921 race riot in which hundreds of Black residents of Tulsa, Oklahoma, were killed by white attackers but what was lost when most of the community of Greenwood was razed and the pervasive racism in America that laid the groundwork for the massacre.

The short film “Pigs” also gets its CBC Gem debut (Oct. 28). Written by Khadijah Roberts-Abdullah and Carly MacIsaac, and directed by Chala Hunter, it dramatizes the frustrations of a Black woman serving food and drinks to a mostly white, privileged clientele at a private party. The cast includes plenty of familiar faces from the Canadian TV and theatre scene, including Karen Robinson (“Schitt’s Creek”), Andrew Moodie, Tony Nappo and Christine Horne.

Odds and Ends

The cast of the new drag reality show “Call Me Mother.” PHOTO CREDIT: OUTtv

There’s a new addition to the genre of drag reality TV, with “Call Me Mother” (Oct. 25, 9 p.m., OUTtv), which has entire drag families competing and drag mothers Miss Peppermint, Crystal and Barbada de Barbades forced to eliminate their own adopted drag children. Farra N Hyte, drag mother of Brooke Lynn Hytes, is judge and choreographer. No screeners were available.

Also unavailable to be screened were episodes of Season 13 of “Doctor Who,” the last season for Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor. It returns Oct. 31 at 7:55 p.m. on CTV Sci-Fi Channel with the appropriately titled episode “The Halloween Apocalypse.”

Amazon Prime Video debuts animated comedy “Fairfax” (Oct. 29), which lampoons consumer and influencer culture, among other things.

Apple TV Plus has “Swagger” (Oct. 29), about the world of youth basketball, inspired by the experiences of co-creator and NBA player Kevin Durant.

On PBS, there’s “Nova Universe Revealed” (Oct. 27, 9 p.m.), a co-production with BBC Studios Science Unit that tells the story of the universe using CGI images and archival footage from scientific missions. Photorealistic approximations of the birth of the first star, two galaxies colliding and a super-massive black hole are among the supersized drama promised.